Bio
Sally Struthers is an American actress best known for her role as Gloria Stivic, the daughter of Archie and Edith Bunker, on the television sitcom All in the Family, from 1971-1978.
She was born Sally Ann Struthers on July 28, 1948, in Portland, Oregon and raised there, pursuing an acting career following high school. Relocating to Los Angeles, she trained at the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theatre Arts and earned a scholarship as its most promising student.
She performed briefly in regional stock plays until finding her break as both a commercial actress and dancer on TV.
She appeared as a regular on such variety shows as The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967) and The Tim Conway Comedy Hour (1970) and showed starlet promise in films as well offering ditsy support in the Jack Nicholson starrer Five Easy Pieces (1970) and the chase film The Getaway (1972) top-lining Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw.
In addition she found work in the made-for-TV movies Aloha Means Goodbye (1974), Hey, I'm Alive! (1975), My Husband Is Missing (1978), And Your Name Is Jonah (1979), and A Gun in the House (1981), to name a few.
Struthers' baby-doll voice worked extremely well for her in cartoons. She remained active off-camera providing little girl voices for Saturday morning entertainment, notably her teenage Pebbles Flintstone character.
Other voice-over work included TaleSpin (1990), as Rebecca 'Becky' Cunningham, and puppeteer Jim Henson's creative prehistoric sitcom Dinosaurs (1991) playing dino-daughter Charlene Sinclair.
Her significant weight gain in later years moved her quickly into broad character schtick.
She showed that she had lost none of the fun for which she was known by providing broad and hearty comedy relief on both daytime soaps and prime-time episodics including General Hospital (2002), Gilmore Girls (2000-2007) and Still Standing (2003-2006).
Struthers was parodied in two episodes of South Park: "Starvin Marvin" (1997), and "Starvin' Marvin in Space" (1999).
In the former episode, she appeared as a grossly obese caricature of herself who worked for the Feed the Children Foundation, a fictionalized version of the Christian Children's Fund. The charity, however, was just a front, and all of the food destined for those in need ended up being consumed by Struthers.
In the latter episode, Struthers was even more exaggeratedly caricatured, this time as Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars.